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Canadian Cellphone Bills Are Some of the Highest In the World, Says Report (straight.com)
Freshly Exhumed shares a report from Straight: A report released this week by the Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED) confirms that Canada ranks among the top three most costly countries for mobile wireless plans. Comparing the U.K, Italy, France, Australia, Japan, and the U.S. on six tiers of pricing -- which looked at talk-time, texts, and data -- the document shows that Canada has the most expensive mid-range and higher-tier plans in the world. "It is unacceptable that Canadians continue to pay ever-rising prices year after year for something as critical as mobile communications services," said Katy Anderson, Digital Rights Advocate at OpenMedia.
My US cell phone bill is pretty high too but without providing details you will have to just take my word for it.
That's why I know a lot of people without cellphones. Basic packages are around $15~$20 and only give you about 10 hours of voice calls. You can pay $10~$20 extra on top of that for something like 100~500MB of data. It's just insane.
And there's basically monopolies on the coverage everywhere, you only have options if you live in or near the big cities. Get outside of Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal and your list of options gets really small, really fast.
#DeleteFacebook
I live in Canada and can't believe what people are willing to pay, but that's just it -- the phone companies charge it and they pay it. Myself, I have a pay-as-you-go plan where I can buy minutes in a $100 chunk which doesn't expire for 365 days, and for several years I've never maxed out that $100 so it keeps rolling over. I think I have about $250 still in there right now. That's the best deal I could find, as it's only $8.33 per month, but I only use it for a few phone calls and maybe about a dozen texts per week with my wife. No data, I just use WiFi everywhere. My wife, on the other hand, with her iPhone 7 is paying around $60/month including data on a Rogers account, I think.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Anyone invested in Telus, Rogers, and Bell have had a good decade.
My mailbox is at the same height as anywhere else.
Look at Alaska, and Hawaii. Super expensive.
Cell phones are cheap in Saskatchewan. They have competition (sasktel) I just got new phones the other day and every fucking salesperson told me that there was no difference between carriers because "there's so much competition their pricing is identical" That's collusion.
But.... But.... But..... Free medical!
I am Canadian and it is real fact that Canada has stong pro-net-neutrality laws which are prime cause of expensive bills. If we were smart to kick out libtards we could end net nutrality and the deregulation is guaranteed to lower prices.
After all, it's not ridiculous for a company to charge as much as people are willing to pay for a product or service, even if they pay it only because it is preferable to them than the inconvenience of not having it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you look at the actual report, you'll find the differences between the prices in the US and Canada are not that dramatic. And they don't take into consideration all the lovely fees and service charges that get added to your cellular bill.
Here's a direct link to the report, because the article itself gives almost no useful data:
https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
I got my Telus mobility bill just a couple days ago, it's just a few cents shy of $90 for a 1 GB data plan. I get about 300 minutes of call time (which I don't think I've ever gotten close to using) and unlimited texting nationwide (whoop de doo).
I'm really thinking about going back to a dumb phone, or at least scrapping the data plan. 99% of the time I'm on WiFi anyway.
crazy dynamite monkey
Am I missing something or do the numbers they report for US broadband seem way out of wack?
Saskatchewan has some of the lowest rates, for example.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Socialism just doesnâ(TM)t work.
Rogers Wireless will slam charges in my T-Mobile phone. Had to call T-Mobile to have the charges reversed. Every. single. time. Very very abusive practice.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
First world problem. No sympathy.
The world got along for millenia without cell phones.
Can't afford your cell phone? No problem. Eat Raman noodles or get a second job.
.. I'd like to post a rant, but can't afford the data.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
It's fucking bullshit that they get to have their cake and eat it too. If I go over one month, they get to charge me up the ass for it. But if I don't hit my limit the next month, there's absolutely no credit back. This is fucking bullshit. It should go both ways or no way at all. Fuck 'em.
I signed up for a Voice and 6GB data plan when the iPhone first came to Canada. It cost almost $85/mo (taxes in). It's still cheaper than any comparable plan you can get now.
I got fed up and did the math. It would actually be cheaper to sign up with GoogleFi in the US, and just roam in Canada.
So what I do now, is I use a flex data tablet plan. Costs $17 for 3GB, and $10/1GB after that, and I use a VOIP provider for voice and text, which costs less than a dollar a month for the number, and pennies a minute for usage. I would literally have to be talking for 2 weeks straight before I ever hit what my old plan cost. Most months it costs me less than $20.
Why aren't the Canadians providing cell service to every Canadian via a government entity? (sarcasm)
Every time I see one of the articles I thank an Internet god that now of the companies have bothered to bring cell service to my (not remote, but rural) part of Canada.
Cell phone usage is super super cheap. Like electricity cheap. So cheap that I have long ago stopped looking at the bills.
I don't respond to AC's.
So, the summary says
As I see it, the phrase "among the top three" means: "third" (because surely if it was the most expensive or the second most they'd say that. First could, of course, also be labelled "among the top three," but you'd just call it first.) And there were six countries compared. So: Third of six is in the middle, not "some of the highest".
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Cell phone providers. :)
Turn it around and the article looks positive for carriers
Iâ(TM)m in the US and I laugh when people say cell phone bills are expensive. Sure, if you go with the main characters. Pick a MVNO and you can pay $20-30 for unlimited talk + text and 1-2GB of data per month. Youâ(TM)re still using the major network with the great coverage, but are paying less than half.
As long as I can remember just about everything in Canada is 20-30% more than in the U.S.. Sometimes 50% more, it varies as our dollar goes up and down like a yo-yo. Which we expect. The Bell-Rogers-Telus bunch just shove it in a little further.
10 years ago I lived in Washington (state) and got a job commuting to Vancouver for work. I looked into getting a Canadian cell phone, and it turned out that adding the Canada roaming option to my U.S. plan was cheaper per minute than any Canadian plan.
So just as this was posted, there is a $60/mo promo going on with all the carriers in BC and AB, $60/mo for 10GB data, unlimited nationwide text/talk, BYOD. Some of the carriers (and probably soon all) are also offering it in ON. Get on it while you can.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
I live in Canada as a US expat. US allows ISPs to control the last mile so Comcast and such prohibit any competition for service to your house. Ontario, at least, requires Rogers, Bell to lease their lines to anyone. So I contract with VMedia and get cable with a couple of premium packages and 35 mbit down for about CAD$70 a month, much cheaper than what I was paying in the US ($70 a month for 1.5 mbit down. Really. Try living in Qwest territory.)
OTOH the US prohibits telcos from owning cell towers, and the cell tower operators must lease to anyone so competition is fierce. As a result there's lots of competition and mobile prices are reasonable. In Ontario, Rogers owns Rogers towers, and no one else can use them. Each telco has to build its own tower network, decreasing competition and driving up prices.
What the numbers in the report don't show is that in the US you can get family bundles that substantially lower the bill; I have 5 lines and pay about US$120 a month for the service; the first line is $60 and then each additional line is $10. If I was to contract with Rogers, I'd pay CAD$60 PER LINE with no discount. Sure I can share data, but I have to pay full freight for each line.
After five years of paying 50 CAD for more data and minutes than I ever used in a month, I went to a prepaid plan with minutes and data that don't expire at the end of the month if I pay the $15 base charge (Koodo). I now average about $25 a month in cell costs without being very stingy with my data or minutes.
My wife uses her phone MUCH less than I do, so she is on a pay as you go plan and spends around $5 a month with no data (speakout7eleven).
The key is to buy phones outright and not get sucked in to contracts.
But it is still true that people in other countries with higher population densities, more competition, or more regulation still pay much less than we in Canada, especially for the heavy users.
------- Mark
Where the data was actually collected: Canada: Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Regina, and Vancouver; United States: Boston, Kansas City, Minneapolis, and Seattle; UK: London; France: Paris; Italy: Rome; Germany: Berlin; Japan: Tolyo.
Let me guess - The rates were cheaper in the places with higher population density.
When they say that the price is high because Canada is a big country and few people... I simply answer this:
French tourists in Canada have a better deal than Canadian themselves!
So last time I went to France, I went to one of their SIM card vending machine where I bought the SIM card using my Canadian Credit Card and I'm still using it in Canada!
http://mobile.free.fr/fiche-fo...
Using Free Mobile, you get a very good deal in France where you can call in more than 100 countries in the world and 100gb data...
But they get also a pretty good deal in 35 countries!
For 20€/month (no contract):
- Unlimited calls/sms/mms in that country and France
- 25gb data (not as fast as LTE... I get between 2mbit and 4mbit AND 25gb!)
- You can choose the network. In Canada, I can choose between Bell, Rogers and Telus (Videotron doesn't accept the connection). So when the speed or network reception is not good in one place, I can switch to another network.
- You can "Pause" it by downgrading to the 2€/month deal
That means that my mother, who also kept her Free's sim card, can call me for no extra cost even if we are anywhere within those 35 countries
That means also that if I go to USA, I also get this deal for no extra cost
The only thing that cost much more is the Toll Free number. So I just ask them for their "not Toll Free number" so I can call them... for free! :P
Enjoy!
Check out the quarterly results for each of them, its actially a fairly
low margin business thanks to a) government spectrum fees, i.e a massive hidden tax and b) less buying power due to being much smaller than the big boys down south and in europe. the likes of ericsson are raping us blind because they can. in europe you have conglomerates like vodafone which are not legal here due to foreign ownership regulations (socialism is expensive eh?). perhaps it is time for the government to do away with the protectionist laws so we can sell our telcos
off and get decent buying power from the equipment vendors? you also see strategic movements such as consolidated access networks happening, bellus, rogers and tbaytel/mtsa/videotron, also, no wonder bell wanted to buy out mtsa, i.e to scuttle the deal they have with rogers! yes there is much room
for efficiency at the carriers, believe me. but there is a lot more to this than just evil telco c level types. most of the problem would be solved by relaxing regulation on ownership.
Power bills in Canada can be insanely expensive because of massive mismanagement over decades, and paying back money borrowed over that time. Hell, the billing system for Ontario basically didn't work for over a year. Some utilities in Canada have some great linemen working for them, but I would not trust whoever runs their offices to screw in a light bulb.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
I Canadian dollar is roughly the same as an Australian dollar. The prices the report claims are completely wrong. 15g a month, unlimited calls and messages can be had for 35$ and yet the rport lists 70$
Quit your bitching! Similar areas in Russia, China & even Finland DO NOT have any cell service...
They only looked at eight countries total, including the U.S. and Canada. No others as sparsely populated as Canada. It's a bit like breathlessly claiming that they're below average half the time!
The problem is Canada is there is very little competition, and what does exist seems to actively collude and price fix (depending on your definitions I suppose). From my simple perspective, just go to Bell or Rogers (or one of their subsidiaries) websites. You'll see the exact same plans, for the exact same prices. The new player Wind, might actually shake some things up, however they have a pretty limited market share and is only really available is certain markets anyway. I am not surprised in the least that Canada has the most expensive rates. While I think the CRTC tries every now and again, they are full of former industry shills, and get bullied around half the time by the active industry. What is even worse is the roaming rules. I know I went overseas a number of years ago with a large mixed nationality group, and they were all aghast at what I paid, and what my limitations were. Basically I couldn't use my phone at all without Wifi someplace. Now that said, with the new unlocking measures being put into place in 2018 at the behest of the CRTC, that should at least help in that regard.
However even to the point of leasing lines (which is internet not mobile but you mentioned it), there was a case brought before the CRTC in Ontario of TekSavvy an independent ISP and Bell, about what Bell charged for the leased line, and the throttling of said line. As I recall TekSavvy lost, where basically the Bell argument was that they provide shitty expensive service to their customers, so if Teksavvy were to use their lines, they would be obligated to provide the same shitty expensive service...
Anyway as I said, it is slowly getting better in Canada, but it is sloooow, likely because of no real competition and the few companies that do exist fight the CRTC tooth and nail, lobby government, etc...
Exactly this. Mobile prices also vary significantly by province, due to varying states of regulation making competition more viable. Saskatchewan has some arms-length crown-owned providers which produces a competitive market with the big 3. Over there prices are in the area of $45/mo for phone+5GB, versus the exact same provider/plan in Ontario being $60/mo.
And for all the idiots talking about population density? Saskatchewan = 1.8 persons/km, Ontario = 14.1 persons/km. The difference is competition and regulatory capture.